1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and more particularly to manifest integrity management through RFID.
2. Description of the Related Art
RFID is an area of automatic identification that has quietly been gaining momentum in recent years and is now being seen as a radical means of enhancing data handling processes, complimentary in many ways to other data capture technologies such bar coding. The object of any RFID system is to carry data in suitable transponders, generally known as tags, and to retrieve data, by machine readable means, at a suitable time and place to satisfy particular application needs. Data within a tag may provide identification for an item in manufacture, goods in transit, a location of an item, the identity of a vehicle, an animal or an individual. By including additional data the prospect is provided for supporting applications through item specific information or instructions immediately available on reading the tag.
An RFID object tracking system requires, in addition to tags, a means of reading or interrogating the tags and some means of communicating the data to a host computer or information management system. In this respect, an RFID object tracking system also can include a facility for programming data into the tags. Notably, the tags can be active and powered in nature, or passive and unpowered in nature. Communication of data between tags and a reader can be by wireless communication. Two methods distinguish and categorize RFID object tracking systems, one based upon close proximity electromagnetic or inductive coupling and one based upon propagating electromagnetic waves. Coupling is via ‘antenna’ structures forming an integral feature in both tags and readers. While the term antenna is generally considered more appropriate for propagating systems it is also loosely applied to inductive systems.
RFID systems can be roughly grouped into four categories: electronic article surveillance (EAS) systems, portable data capture systems, networked systems and positioning systems. EAS systems typically involve a one bit system used to sense the presence or absence of an item. Portable data capture systems, by comparison, can be characterized by the use of portable data terminals with integral RFID readers and can be used in applications where a high degree of variability in sourcing required data from tagged items may be exhibited. Networked system applications can generally be characterized by fixed position readers deployed within a given site and connected directly to a networked information management system. The transponders are positioned on moving or moveable items, or people, depending upon application. Finally, positioning systems use transponders to facilitate automated location and navigation support for guided vehicles.
Despite the ability to track an item or identify an item readily according to RFID, tracking a single item in of itself cannot cure the challenges facing the mass shipment of product. In particular, once product has been encapsulated within a container for shipment, verifying the identity of a single parcel in the container can be physically near impossible as to do so would require the physical retrieval of the parcel to ensure the correct RFID tag has been read to the exclusion of other RFID tags on other parcels in the container. The problem of ensuring a manifest for a container (namely, the listing of contents of a container) not only is a supply chain problem, but also a problem of security and loss prevention.